Bye Bye Baby

I’ve heard it said that writing a book is like giving birth.

It all starts with a passionate flash of inspiration, then there’s a period of uncertainty where there seems to be nothing there at all apart from a vague mass that means nothing at all to anyone else, only you. Slowly the component parts begin to come together until it starts to take shape and become a small but recognisable version of the finished product. Eventually, after around nine months of love, nurture and discomfort, it’s time for your beloved creation to emerge into the world. Whereas hitherto it’s been yours, completely yours, and you were the only one who could see its beauty, now it’s time for others to take a peek at something that was once a part of you but is now a creature in its own right. They get to see what you’ve been talking about and to decide on its beauty (or otherwise) for themselves. And hopefully, if they’re polite, they won’t say that it looks like a scrunched up version of Winston Churchill.

You know what? That’s rubbish. For one thing, unless you write shocking revelations that you can’t prove about high-profile celebrities, you don’t end up paying for a book for the best part of the next twenty years. And, assuming that you aren’t a particularly aggressive typist, there’s much less blood involved in writing a book too.

There’s a massive emotional attachment involved in both though, I’ll grant that, but let me ask all parents one question: A few months after your baby was born did you lose most of your interest in it (apart from seeing what cash it brings home every month) and move on to the fun part of creating a new child?

That’s how it is with writers. Whereas parents can continue to nurture and improve their infant for years after it’s born, a writer pretty much washes his or her hands of their new ‘baby’ shortly after it’s made its first appearance in the world. Once that first sale is made it’s no longer theirs, there’s nothing more that can be done.

And the nine months analogy? That’s wildly inaccurate too. It’s quite possible to knock out a paperback in three months, start to finish. It might not be great art, but it could be perfectly acceptable. Others can take years. For example I’m still working on a novel that I started making notes for in the last century. To make that count on the ‘it’s like giving birth’ comparison you’d have to say that the road to conception begins at your first fumbled schoolyard kiss.

All this of course is leading me up to saying that my new collection of short stories (“Forks in the Road”) is now available in all formats. If you like, you can download it for your favourite e-reader device or, if you don’t hold much truck with that particular new-fangled malarkey, head over to www.lulu.com where you can buy a paperback version. If you want a signed copy, drop me a line.

I’m delighted with how it’s turned out and at the moment I’m allowing myself a little while to bask in its beauty before starting the hard work on the next one. I’ve been scribbling in my Rough Ideas book for a while, let’s see what comes out of it.

That's another thing that's different about making human babies. The actual creation process is so much more fun.